The Pitfalls Of Politicizing Science In Nepal

Whenever we are at the stage of politicizing science, it means that we are in a state of desperation, because most of the time we intentionally leave science intact and sacred as the last place for our political messages to spread, so that science being politicized speaks of a certain crisis of the political parties who undertake this endeavor. In desperation, we leave our political thoughts behind and simply rouse physical bodies of the scientists/science scholars towards expressing the political opinions and slogans that we demand. They are to go out on the street directly from the classroom, without a formation of a political agenda and strategy suited to them and to their studies and subject. And thus we have the extent of their negative response towards their politicization being quite shallow, as shown in the Nepali context of doctors and students protesting against politics in science by only protesting the disruption of their studies, as if they haven't really had the chance to discuss and explore how politics has entered science as a taught subject in a manner deeper than the rousing up or disruption of the movement of their physical bodies and minds.

One may say the politicization of science is the result of the arrival of a critical moment in a political movement or idea, when our politics absolutely must be expressed by as many people as possible, yet this interpretation is incorrect for it provides no reason for science being so completely isolated from politics in the first place. The only agenda critical in the moment when science is politicized is the need for physical bodies, for sheer numbers and for raising the volume of a protest; scientists seldom play a bigger role than that in politics.

For we may ask: are scientists ever allowed (or ever responsible) for the utilization of their intellect towards politics, but even more so, are they ever allowed to infuse their own scientific ideas with political ideas? No they aren't allowed this endeavor, for there is a fear that if scientists are given this type of freedom to interpret and apply political ideas, they will muddle up the ideas and end up producing a confused scientific-political statement which may undermine the more obvious messages that political figures wish to spread. It is not out of fear that science itself may lose its stature in contact with politics that political figures keep science away, but rather they feel that politics will become distorted by scientists/science scholars.

Yet any time science is put to a social cause, or a social cause asks of science to “invent something,” such as a vaccine, the political figures are not far away, not to act in a historically prominent and serious manner to either initiate or prevent science from being social, but rather to act slyly and in an moral-instructional manner to preach to scientists/science scholars the importance of society, to show that despite science's ideas ranging beyond human society, it is ultimately turned towards human society, and so to hold scientists/science scholars partly accountable for the crises in society that may come up someday. The urgency of political parties calling on science is a fake urgency, yet it is mistaken by scientists and science scholars, who consider their involvement immensely important and become politically active in the most evident way they think: protesting out on the streets.

The Schools: Caught Between Colonization and Psychoanalysis

Colonization/the colony is at the horizons always to an education system (or, schools), and also it is always far away from where the action, where the stuff, for psychoanalysis takes place. It is always at the best vantage point to the education system: it is able to discern what is going on in the practice of teaching, and it disrupts this action if it is too dangerous to the colony in order to fulfill its own goals. For psychoanalysis, the effect of colonization arrives through the mediation of the education system: psychoanalysis relies on the techniques perfected in the education system, namely the techniques of narrativizing episodes (“literature”), converting persons into characters (“history”), identifying context (“sociology”) and more, enlisting, by the end, and especially in the mathemes and symbols of Lacan, even mathematics and the hard sciences. So that when colonization disrupts the education system, as a second-hand effect, it disrupts psychoanalysis; or perhaps the disruption of psychoanalysis is the intended goal, where the education system is disrupted only because it is close to psychoanalysis.

But perhaps colonization is even closer to the education system than psychoanalysis is, for as much as psychoanalysis is dependent on the education system for its raw materials and “research,” colonization has the closeness to actively disrupt the education system, as if it were a direct parent to it. Yet in another way colonization is also far away, for it puts the figure of the colonist-power/colonizer at the horizons while sending through a messenger figure of this colonist-power to do the disruptive work on the education system. Psychoanalysis seeks talking figures to conduct the talking cure, but colonization never presents subjects as talking figures, those that speak are only there to deliver prepared messages after the briefest of interactions, so that the content of their speech is second-hand, and the main reason the messengers are there is to present a written text, a written text prepared with great effort by the colonist-power to erase his/her own mark in it. As written, the text fits well with the education system (or, the textual system) as well as avoiding psychoanalysis (or, the non-textual talking cure) in a single stroke.

With the colony firmly at the horizons of the education system, the expansion of the education system is pre-figured, for it is to go towards colonization itself, it is to further “colonize,” submit to the mentality of colonialism, become colonial. The education system which in smaller form looked to be resistant to the system of colonization and the influence of the colony, upon expansion becomes a prominent force of colonialism itself. The colonized becomes the colony, and psychoanalysis now steps in to record the changes to wider society: the dilution of characters (“the end of history”), the undifferentiated space as replacement for specific context (“the beginning of an inaccurate sociology”), and more, culminating with the abandonment of the psychoanalyst by the education system which once supported it, for in a twist it is the psychoanalyst which now fulfills the role of a historical figure with a narrative and a context. The psychoanalyst becomes an object of knowledge and not the subject who fed off of or even demanded knowledge.